Recommendations

Hello! Shalom! Aloha! Mabuhay!
If this is your first visit to Modern Apocrypha, I have only two recommendations for continuing on with minimal confusion:

1) Please begin with the first introductory post (found HERE) and work your way forward. Almost all the posts on this blog flow chronologically and will make more sense with the background and context of previous ones. Jumping in anywhere might be disorienting.

2) Please read along in the texts posted off to the right. I try not to summarize too much in the commentary and discussion, and being at least somewhat familiar with what we're discussing or I'm commenting on will be most beneficial and edifying for all involved. Plus, going along with the theme of this blog, any hidden truths to be brought to light will be found within the text itself and not necessarily within my ramblings.
Okay, fine, three recommendations:3) Please read with an open heart, mind, and spirit. See what truths you can find in these works--ones which speak to you. Namaste : )

Thursday, June 2, 2016

ANG AKLATAN - SURAN 6 - JOURNEYS & GIANTS

With Suran learning of his genealogy, Ruman (remember, the final compiler, editor, and sometime narrator) decides this would be a good place to insert Suran's paternal lineage. Working backward, it looks like this:

David, a Levite through Libni, escaped into the wilderness sometime during the First Temple Period, but probably later around the time of the final Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem. The primary piece of evidence pointing to this conclusion is the fact that writings of Isaiah are already included in their Record of the Ancients, so the escape would have to be sometime after Isaiah's ministry. Secondarily, the noble and priestly classes were singled out by the Babylonian conquerors as prime candidates for execution or deportation, so Levites would've been on high alert. There's no detailed account yet published of David's travels, but his group made their way from Israel to the Philippines comparatively quickly, and his son, Yosef, was his firstborn on the islands.

Ruman also mentions that an account of the travels of Shem's descendants is given elsewhere (in the History of the Ophir) but gives a quick synopsis here. Basically, two brothers, Ophir and Havilah, a few generations removed from Shem, leave their homeland (probably somewhere in the Middle East) for a new place of residence and desiring to discover where their distant relatives have been dispersed. They travel many years until they come to the land of Kemet, which is one of the primary names of ancient Egypt in their own language. It literally means "Black Land" due to the black fertile soil of the Nile Valley in contrast to the barren, desert "Red Land" (Deshret) on either side. Here is Kemet depicted in Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs:

km + m + t + city/inhabited land determinative

After spending many years in Egypt, this group makes their way west across northern Africa to the Atlantic Ocean, which they decide to cross (because Morocco wasn't good enough for them or something ; ) And after crossing the Atlantic and coming to another land (America), they wish they would've stayed in Morocco because they're captured, enslaved, and forced to "labor much under the yoke of [a population of] large men." There are a lot of fun Native American traditions and folktales of ancient giants (as there are in pretty much every culture), but there could be a seed of truth here. Also, this fits the Book of Mormon time frame of the Jaredite empire across the Land Northward. Contemporaries of Joseph Smith say the breastplate, which accompanied the interpreters that had been passed down from the brother of Jared, was too large and cumbersome for a 6'2" 200-pound Joseph to wear comfortably.

After many years in captivity, the Lord finally leads them out of the land and across the "great deep" to the west (Pacific) to the islands, which they name after themselves--Lekas, Ofir, Tarsis, Mindan, etc.--like any good explorer or colonizer. (Remember, we discussed the names and significance of these islands in Suran 1, aside from Mindan, which equates to Mindanao.) Over time, they eventually mix with the indigenous inhabitants of the islands.

Again, Ruman mentions that he's only paraphrasing the story here in order to establish the genealogy of Suran, "the father of [his] people". During this incredibly long, multi-generational journey, Ophir's son Seldam is born in the land west of Kemet, Seldam's son Yursal is born in captivity among the large men, and Yursal's son Enos is born on the voyage to the islands. They are all Suran's ancestors as well because Yosef of the Levitic line marries a descendant of Enos of the Semitic line. Their son Josu-a, then, becomes the literal merging of these two lines and two distinct priesthood Orders. Josu-a is the first in the islands authorized to administer the rites of both Orders, and thus Suran also is authorized by lineage to continue administering the requirements of both Laws and Orders as contained in the records he has found. (We'll talk more about the distinction between these two Laws and Orders in Suran 8.)